June 28th

At las its Friday! Time is flying by very quickly. Next week will be the last week before the kids have exam review week! So needless to day my days are filled with urgency to get the kids to hand in everything, madly marking everything and just keeping afloat. Today is also payday! WOOOHOOO haha, after school Andy Kim and I went to have sushi at the mall. It was pretty cheap! My dinner was $10 Cdn, and it was a tuna unagi rice bowl. We also split a huge nirigi platter - man was it good! Kim and i have never eaten large fish eggs nigiri form
before so we did it together haha.

Flipping through the menu i think James wouldve like eating this. I didnt order it tho, looked like too much work to eat

Andy lost a bet that he was gonna quit smoking so he was originally gonna buy me dinner but instead he can just buy me dessert. I decided on Bearded Papa and got not one but THREE! As we were walking to it was getting super excited despite my tummy full of sushi haha!

The whole time i was eating these cream puffs i was analyzing WHY they tasted SO good. And then i realized it! The flakyness is bc they use shortening and or butter in the choux paste...ALOT of it too. So its almost like a croissant but not quite. After confirming this with scrutinizing eyes....i dont think ill ever enjoy Bearded Papas as much anymore =(. Oh well three good cream puffs will always be a great memory haha!

While walking around the mall we went into this store and i saw the biggest fly ever! It was just chilling out on a stack of yellow tshirts and right next to it was a rack of tshirts with a FLY on it! lol. The three photos are of a live fly that just sat on the shirt. His eyes were HUGE and rather long compared to any flies ive seen lol. Maybe the fly was looking for a friend haha i dunno.







Anyways its only 11pm but i am so cashed from a long day of school and eating haha. Hope you enjoyed this post, hopefully ill have more interesting things to post soon =)

June 20th (wai cru day)

I know it has been a long time since my last post, but my days havent been too interesting so didnt want to bore you with that.

Today was Wai Cru day which means teacher appreciation day. The students prepared bouquets for the teachers yesterday and practiced songs to be sung . All the  teachers were talking about how enjoyable and fun it was that i kind of hyped up my expectations. Once it was time to go to the gym we sat for an hour and a bit, sang some songs and my class gave me flowers. That was all. lol. This basket was filled with a variety of bouquets, flower rings of jasmine blossoms and bundles of assorted flowers. A large half of my class each gave me one so i had a large basket full of em.

The ring of flower im holding is from one of my students who was very sick for a few days and actually gave me a bag of fruits and goodies to show the parent's appreciation for my efforts. It was very thoughtful and a great surprise to have an admin to come to my desk with a gift bag from a student. The bag had rambutan, fruit that's similar to lychee and pulled pineapple.

Anyways back to the flowers...unfortunatley the flowers are very sweet so ants love to crawl all over them, and so bringing them home would prove to be a terrible idea. We had to throw them out at school or bring them home to throw out.

After wai cru we went back to the office where i opend my drawer to snack on some crackers....to find that the bag had been chewed open by a mouse!!! The house left poop in my drawer too >_<! I ended up throwing alot of my food away since i dunno what else this furry guy walked on, pooped on or whatever. Thankfully my pound of Starbucks was safe =) I found a tin can that would keep it safe =). Our work desks have holes in case if you had cables for computers and such so thats where the furball got into my desk  drawers. I taped it up good so hopefully that'll keep em out.

Life in Thailand has been goin well for me. Lots of planning, balancing and accommodating with constant changing plans (like last minute due date spring on you, cancellation on observations). Night classes haven been going well too almost finished another coarse.The next coarse is self directed (with the witch prof) which will be nice since i wont have to rush home every day to shower, cook dinner and goto class. I find that my life really revolves around food...alot more than other ppl. I love shopping for food, hunting for food, eating food, thinking about food...thankfully im not a junk food monster haha.

School ends at 330, then there is a homework classes that go till 4. Parents pay extra for this so not all students will attend. My homework class is my P5/1 and there is only 10. I find that its such a great opportunity to bond with the kids, learn more about them and develop a better understanding of them.

This weekend is Saturday classes for me which means i teach a small group of kids a pre selected lesson. These are kids i normally dont teach which will be an interesting change of pace. I look forwards to the challenge.

June 11th

Sitting in class and having the longest and boring-est discussions. People just keep on asking “what if” questions >_<.  It is storming outside rather intensely. Our classroom is across the basketball court from our apartment – thankfully it is covered so when class is done we won’t get wet walking there

 Anyhow night classes started this week and so my day looks something like this:

Wake up at 545, leave at 630

Get to school at 7, teach at 830 – 4 (which includes half hour of homework class at the end of the day)

Night class 545-830

Everyday seems to fly by since it is always filled to the brim with things to do. Ive managed to maximize time by bringing lunch to the office to eat (from the cafeteria) so that I could multi task.  Cooking food while marking (in the apt) so that in the morn/dinner I just need to warm it up. Weekends are also jam packed because that is the only time to prep and stock my awesome looking fridge. Have I showed you my stocked fridge? Haha. I absolutely love my rice cooker because I just throw food and water in there and not need to worry about things burning while I shower or whatever.

We finally got our school uniforms yesterday and it was such an exciting day – esp because mine turned out as best as the uniform can look. I ordered 2 dress 2 tops and 2 skirts. My fav on kind looks like a stewardess uniform but I really like it. The skirt n shirts are only ok, not the best

At the end of the month there are about 3 school days in which classes are cancelled because they have teacher appreciation day – students give thanks to us =D and we offer them blessings. Although things are strict sometimes, there is some leniencies too – my kids were really good so I rewarded them by taking them to play outside for half a class – un educated based. I was surprised to that they were ok with this, but it was a very nice break =)

YAY class is over, so that'll be all for this post...back to my room to cook rice and wash up for bed, so tired 

June 6th

It's been a little while since i last wrote, marking and planning has taken up alot of my time.  Here in Thailand we teachers don't have access to a photocopier.  Everything gets sent to the copy room which they have a designated person that they hired from a company to do all of our copying.  Usually it takes a day or two. These machines are also primitive....so they don't stable. But thankfully they can collate (photocopy booklets in order).  If stapling is required, u must tape the corners so the kids (even in  my P5 class) don't get poked by accident.  So MORE time is needed to assemble.  This is what a finished two page worksheet needs to look like:

My class tomorrow also gets to lay w iPads to learn about the digestive system.  I was busy preparing a workbook for the last night.  The finished product looks pretty good, i hope they'll enjoy it. 

Yesterday i also went to big c all by myself on a BUS! Fare is 6.5B so five or six times as cheap as a cab ride wouldve costed.  I ordered a larger fridge and was about to buy a larger electric cooker when i stumbled on a rice cooker! GENIUS! It's big and i can steam food in it. So excited that i ripped it open as soon as i got home.  

The main reason y i wanted to buy a new fridge and an easier way to warm my food is because later on when i have night classes again i will not have time to do anything other then have my head stuck in books - studying, prepping, marking, lesson planning.....so eating will not be much of a priority so if i can designate the least amount of time cooking during the week itll be the best idea to maintain sanity. 

I also found some pretty tasty sprinkles that i can put on my rice.  We have this in Canada too but its a made in Japan product and its quite costly. 

This one was about 28B and was pretty good.  Very well seasoned and tastes great in congee. As a matter of fact I'm thinking I'm gonna bring this to school tomorrow morning =D

Some other fun things i ought from big c include frozen soup w rice and a bag of yogurt that came w a cute lil bag

The soup was pretty disappointing especially because the pic looked amazing >_<.  Oh well it was food in my belly haha

I stayed up a lil later than normal last night and felt like such a zombie today.  Normally i try and hide my yawns while i roam my classroom to make sure kids are working because of the CCTV.  If on a normal day i already yawn today i figured would be worse so i decided to try thai red bull.  It's rally actually just tastes like normal red bull but not carbonated. I was also craving a steamed bun (from sev)

Need to go get some shut eye now.

June1st (Chinatown)

Yesterday Andy and i went made a trip to Chinatown with high hopes of getting some tasty dim sum. After taking a taxi, sky train and a subway we got to Chinatown only to find out most hinge opened at 3-4!   The subway was pretty neat - since we didn't have a pass card we bought a token that u scan when u leave the gate.  It's a lil black plastic coin similar to some key fobs that people get at work. Afterwards when u leave the station u just deposit at the last gate. 

The dim sum place we went to was pretty crappy but very cheap.  Everything on the menu was 20B so not even a dollar each.  Only two pcs per 

We had three rounds of food haha.  Basically ordered everything on the menu (there was a back page too) in ital our bill was about $10 cdn haha! The best thing was steamed custard bun...kinda hard to mess that up i suppose. 

This dim sum was pretty good just because it had a huge piece of duck egg yolk on it! Lol

After eating we wandered the streets and came across SO many shops that sold shark fin soup and displayed shark fins and mouths in the front of the store

LOOK AT ALL THOSE TEETH!!!!

The markets were all wholesale which means u have to buy in multiples.  Some stores u must buy 3 or sometimes 12 pieces! It's easy if your choosing stickers, jewellery etc but picking more than 1 purse when choices are limited is hard. Look at these super fun stickers for my kiddies

After a few hours of market walking  we gota kinda bored so we hit up the mall where i bought a pair of shorts and two polos for sports day at school.  I was also thinking when i go visit temples i can wear this too since u have to have your shoulders and knees covered. When ever i think of khaki dress pants and polos i think Koreans lol. But yea they were cheap $5 for a "Polo" shirt haha